Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Economic growth has ended: fact. Attempts to restimulate it via pressure on consumers, monetary injections, and so on will be chaotic and unpredictable, but more importantly will only add to the ecological pressure caused by an economy growing out of control. The alternative? Accept that the growth has needed, even welcome it, and begin to plan for a stabilised, post-growth economy.
Today’s article is the 5th and final installment of my graphical look at the recently released 2012 BP Statistical Review of World Energy. This article looks at the explosive growth of renewable energy, but also places it in the context of our overall energy demands.
Peter Bane’s handbook, while not quite encyclopedic, is nothing if not authoritative. I can honestly say, without fear of exaggeration, that I hold my head a little higher as I stride about my miniscule fiefdom, now that I’ve read The Permaculture Handbook: Garden Farming for Town and Country.
We are faced with an impending calamity that threatens to bankrupt the planetary ecosystem and with it much of the manmade world. Rirdan submits a plan that truly goes the distance: a highly detailed, planetary-wide blueprint that lays out a new course for our technological and industrial engines. It calls for sweeping adjustments in the way every person thinks and lives.
Comparing the world to a prison or a hospital in which we are all inmates or patients is hardly original. Patrick McGoohan did the former, and TS Eliot did the latter. They are clever, moving allegories, but not terribly useful. The mysterious enemy of The Prisoner turns out to be his own ego. But our modern global imprisonment is subtler: It is our culture that has imprisoned us, a culture evolved in the belief that this is what’s best for the survival and continued expansion of the species.
In surveying the multiple, uprisings, insurgencies, insurrections, confrontations and what have you currently going on in the Middle East, it is hard to believe that all this turmoil will not eventually find its way to our local gas pumps. In the last week the overall situation clearly has taken a turn for the worse with large numbers of Syrian insurgents infiltrating Damascus and Aleppo for the first time accompanied by the spectacular bombing of a security meeting that killed four of the regime’s top leaders.
The world is in serious trouble on the food front. But there is little evidence that political leaders have yet grasped the magnitude of what is happening. The progress in reducing hunger in recent decades has been reversed. Unless we move quickly to adopt new population, energy, and water policies, the goal of eradicating hunger will remain just that.
-High oil prices are caused by consumers, not speculators
-Oil Price Spike Exacerbated by Wall Street Speculation?
-Crude truths about oil prices
-97% of Greenland surface ice turns to slush
-Loss of Arctic sea ice ‘70% man-made’
-Antarctic: Grand Canyon-sized rift ‘speeding ice melt’
-Investor report highlights gap between climate change and action
-Ideology clouds how we perceive the temperatures
-Midwest cities see increase in dangerously hot weather: report
The news outlets love a good disaster, and we’ve all been informed daily of the mega-drought in the Midwest. Three quarters of the US corn crop is under drought. Corn prices are up over 50% in the last month, soybeans are up almost 30%, and the USDA says they are still assessing the damage. No rain in sight yet and when combined with record low carryover stocks, we’re probably looking at another record spike in prices. What I haven’t heard in the news is any discussion over whether we have other options to avoid these increasingly regular crop disasters.
-James Howard Kunstler on Why Technology Won’t Save Us
-Power by the People
-Nuclear power vs. people power
-Breakthrough Material for Carbon Capture Developed
-Effect of Global Warming on U.S. Energy Consumption
-The missing link to a $7 billion market
I have made repeated references in past posts to the modest off-grid photovoltaic (PV) system I built to cover a large share of our—again modest—electricity usage. By popular demand, I’ll take you on a tour of the system: its history, its composition, and adaptation to my house.
